We’ve been writing about the losses Bud Light has taken since endorsing transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney.
They’ve been taking huge hits on all levels since April 1, including toppling out of the number-one-selling beer in America and losing billions in market cap.
But the numbers show that Anheuser-Busch has taken a huge hit in the second quarter, losing a whopping $390 million.
The parent company blamed the ‘volume decline’ of Bud Light for the drop in revenue in its second quarter – with figures showing that total US revenue dropped by 10.5 percent in the April-to-June period compared to a year earlier.
The world’s largest brewer said Thursday that sales to US retailers had plunged 14 percent, adding that it had been ‘underperforming the industry.’ This was a direct result of the tie-in with Mulvaney.
For the second quarter of 2022, Anheuser Busch sold $2.73 billion worth of beer to retailers. But for the second quarter of 2023, sales dropped to $2.35 billion – a slump of $390 million in a year.
They lost nearly 30 percent in core profit, and they’ve lost almost $40 billion in market cap.
In the wake of Bud Light’s “woke” advert, Anheuser-Busch has lost nearly $37 in market value. On March 31 — the day before Mulvaney’s disastrous social media campaign — AB InBev had a market cap of $134.5 billion. As of Thursday, that figure plummeted to $97.74 billion.
As we’ve noted, it’s not just affected Bud Light, but once people found out what other beers were in the Anheuser-Busch stable, those were taking a hit too. Meanwhile, other brands like Coors have gained, and Modelo Especial has taken over the number one spot for the last two months.
This has also upset the distributors in the U.S., many of whom have now given up on getting consumers back, as we reported.
“Consumers have made a choice,” an executive at a Texas-based beer distributor who did not want to be identified told The Post. “They have left [Bud Light] and that’s how it’s going to be. I don’t envision a big percentage of them coming back.”
Anheuser-Busch InBev is also having to lay off about 360 of its executives working in its corporate offices in the U.S.
But despite taking such a huge hit, Anheuser-Bush is still showing they are living in a fantasyland about what is going on. They claimed in their Thursday earnings report that “most consumers are favorable towards the Bud Light brand and approximately 80% are favorable or neutral,” relying upon a survey that they took. Talk about not living in reality and trying to bury your head in the sand. If that were true, why are people running from your brand, and why are you taking such losses?
They just don’t seem to get it, which is why they can’t seem to do the right thing and just keep making things worse. But, at this point, as the distributors said, I don’t know what they could do to recover the people they’ve lost. They’ve effectively stuck a fork in their brand, and it is permanently damaged. The only place to go, I think, is down more.